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Thursday, January 14, 2010

Chocolate has always been one of my favorite food substances the world has to offer. Whenever I look at the dessert list at a restaurant I immediately seek out the dessert the seems to be the darkest, richest chocolate confection. In fact, I’ve never been very fond of dessert and other tangent products of chocolate—to me, chocolate is the essence of what makes other desserts worth having.

When Anna and I walk home from downtown Boulder we struggle not to stop at the corner store to pick up a chocolate bar to have at home. (As of late, this hasn’t been a habit because we’re pretty well stocked with some of the finest chocolate bars from around the world.) We used to love dark chocolate bars in the 70 and 80-percent range from most companies, especially if they were cheap, like ChocoLove. However, now we’ve moved onto better quality and more expensive bars that tout complex flavors and the care of a small batch producer.

It wasn’t until March of 2009, however, that our true obsession for fine chocolate began. We took a 10-day trip to San Francisco to visit Anna’s brother Michael and his girlfriend Heather. They are what most people refer to these days as “foodies.” Part of their fine food obsession is a collection of rare chocolate bars. Each night, after a long day of bike riding and doing the things that tourists do while they’re in SF, we would all sit down with a glass of wine or port and enjoy the differences between each of the bars. That was the first time we had tried Askinosie, Republica del Cacao, Valrhona and at least a dozen others.

Here is a video of our trip to San Francisco (Unfortunately the camera wasn’t around during our chocolate intoxication sessions.)

The tasting experience we had in San Francisco was important, but it didn’t immediately inspire us to begin making chocolate of our own—that came a few months later. If chocolate is a passion of yours, then I hope that you remember one of your favorite chocolate experiences as we remember ours. If you haven’t had one of those memorable moments yet, then maybe we can change that.